


Revelation

by Sententiae



Category: Angel Sanctuary
Genre: Gen, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 22:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sententiae/pseuds/Sententiae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Book of Revelation foretold the war between angels and demons.  The version that ended up in the Bible just happened to get a few little facts wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revelation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [springgreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/springgreen/gifts).



> World building is not a strength of mine, but I had a lot of fun writing this and I hope it hits some of the things you were after ^_^. Merry Christmas!

1\. And so was spoken the revelation of God, in which was given unto his servants the end of the worlds. Such events that had unfolded past and were to unfold once more were witnessed by His eyes and His ears, and recounted through truth and verity alike. Blessed were the ones who heard the tale, and blessed were the ones who were sacrificed to a good that was greater and more powerful.

2\. For there was to be and had once been a great war between angels and demons, fought on a battlefield of carcases and blood. Onto a landscape where thousands fought for evil or against it, the final victor wore many faces, all of them great. 

3\. On this, the most sacrilegious of battlefields, angels stood, their battle-heavy armour tarnished and their eyelids licked with soot and sweat. Their swords stayed locked in constant combat with demons who wore eyes and hair and skin so like their own, but whose souls consumed the blackest night. Already the dead formed mountains and crevasses, bones pressed away from flesh and deep into the wretched soil. 

4\. And onto the battlefield, behold, upon the bleating of a lamb and the unfurling of the first scroll, came an angel in white. A trail of smoke and ash curved away from his mouth, and cynical eyes set in stone surveyed the debris of angels and demons. Blood seeped into the hem of his coat as he passed amongst the dying, kicking away the hands that clawed at his feet with heeled boots. Where others breathed death and destruction, blue eyes found but disdain and mistrust.

5\. Upon the remnants of their souls, physical and terribly mortal, he walked. His mind and heart had been shut away by the madness of another.

6\. As the first of the great angels passed, so came the unfurling of the second scroll, rich and red like blood itself. Wickedness burned in eternally youthful eyes, and a perverse desire for violence stained his blade. For he had cometh in war, and he planned the conquest of the One through the destruction of All. 

7\. Behind the angel in white and behind the angel in red, came the angel in death. He culled all those who had fallen victim to indifference or in revenge, sealing bodies away from their souls eternal. He took no lives of his own, for he was the caretaker of this battlefield and not the executioner. The third scroll, scorched at the edges and crisp to touch, whispered his name before dissolving into ash.

8\. The scrolls, white and red and black, were but cages shaped through words, and each bound within a harbinger of the end of times. The last of the scrolls, barely touched and elegantly composed, unfurled in silence. The fourth horseman was not there, locked away, away inside their own mind. 

9\. And the lamb spoke again, louder and more despairing. 

10\. For from a sea of blood and corpses rose the first of the beasts to face the angels, six abreast and the sins of all humanity comprised in their very likeness. 

11\. First onto the battlefield came the beak-faced Avarice, who snatched away the eyes of the near-dead, stripping away their ability to see God and therefore find salvation. 

12\. And then came forth Gluttony, who struck through the wards of angels, white and pure, tearing feathers and wings from immortal bodies and sending them forever into immortal decay. 

13\. And hence then the madness of Pride, and the tricks and lies that were spun on the edge of a tongue more poisonous than any sword.

14\. And then Envy, hoarding the laden air by tearing away lungs and throats. The organs dripped-dripped-dripped down taloned hands, still beating, still desperately trying to suck in air for a body that was nothing more than spare parts.

15\. And Lust, one moment a man, a beast, a sheep, and always an abomination. 

16\. And Sloth, in both its forms. For one was sleek and cold, long hair falling across iced eyes, and the other was a long, white snake that wove around bodies and sank her fangs into exposed skin.

17\. The second beast, he who was the land and the blood and the barren, rose up then to command the first, as they were his sins and thus wore his mark. Black hair spilt like toxic oil down broad shoulders, and a derelict hate held in his eyes. He swung a sword tarnished by depravity and death, and he sold lies and untruths for the going-rate of only a thousand lives or so.

18\. The first beast danced to his words, all six heads spinning their own version of hell.

19\. And so a war was fought on blood drenched land between the beasts, the angels, the horsemen and the sins. Great monsters that wore the skins of man and bled the most corrupt of depravities thrust with swords born through nature and shaped by dark, sinister minds. For swords held by angels and demons are forged not of humanity or steel, but thought and eternal punishment. 

20\. The swords of the earth, rooted deep in the red soil, were sent up in sharp spikes of silver that impaled those who souls were not worthy of judgement.

21\. The swords of the wind were but shards of glass, which flashed through the air and buried deep in the hearts of those who have been blackened by their shame.

22\. The swords of the sky rained down in beams of light that blazed and burned and incinerated. 

23\. And there was the sword of flame, which never strayed from the hands of War, for it were not safe for any other angel to dare carry it.

24\. When War, the greatest of heaven’s warriors, managed to breach the minions of disease and fetish that surrounded the false profit, the sword found not Lucifer but the one last shard tying him to his past. 

25\. And so then came Wrath, and she became one with all and nothing. 

26\. As angels and demons battled, so were they joined on this field of death by the inorganics. God’s ground rumbled as machines of madness clashed with those of divinity. 

27\. For now a monstrosity in metal moved indiscriminately forward, as tall as a pillar of smoke and burdened with all the evils of the world. 

28\. The machine crushed infidels and angels alike beneath heavy wheels that pressed deep into the earth with each tortured turn. Five large mouths, twisted from copper and silver, jutted from each corner of the structure. 

29\. The first face spat out fire and brimstone, curses laced into the flames. The second huffed out a thick, green gas that was thick and moist, melting away the skin of all those that ended up caught in its breath of poison. 

30\. The other three mouths needed none of the physical tools of destruction, as they spoke instead directly into the minds of the weak. 

31\. One lured with promises of salvation, slick and cool. The angels and demons who heard her words moved like mist towards the steel beast, only to be dragged beneath the wheels and ground into dust. 

32\. The next screamed piercing truths that crawled into minds and crowded thoughts until its victims fell onto their own blades in guilt. 

33\. The last mouth was the largest of them all, and the jaw moved up and down, achingly slow. Gears screeched in protest as the lips moved rhythmically open and shut, open and shut. No sound spilled forth, because the words that angels and demons could come up with themselves were the most damaging of them all. 

34\. The machine fought neither for the angels nor for the demons, it simply was.

35\. This battlefield, steeped in betrayal and smothered with broken feathers, was not the first upon which war had been waged. The initial battlefield took place within the tar-black whorehouse of a disbeliever’s mind. The clean, white simplicity of quietly agreed upon subservience fell victim there to the seductive promises of independent thought. Obedience slayed, there had been nothing left but a red hot rebellion that had spread like pestilence through the weak minds of those that bared witness to pretty, pretty lies.

36\. Like pestilence then, the words had found pockets, corners, in the second battlefield of gossip and corruption. It was on this field that the maddest of Satan’s sins had woven words and deeds that ensnared even the purest of angels, corroding away goodness and allowing for only tarnished, fickle frameworks of sanity to remain. Promises made in revolution and hips and jezebel eyes took out some of heaven’s strongest of allies before a single sword had ever been lifted in violence.

37\. And so this was not the first of the battlefields, but it was surely to be the last. For now those already weakened by falseness and seduction began to fall, while those who remained pure and true continued to rise. The demons danced to a mad, violent tune that destroyed all, but the angels had triumphs of their own. More so, they had the All Mighty on their side. 

38\. For God was good and he favoured those that heralded his words, and so the demons and the beasts were banished from this land, cast into the deepest depravities of hell and set forever in eternal fire. The land was salted into ruination, preventing any such return of the false prophet.

39\. And a lamb bleated, but no-one could hear it above the end of the world.

40\. Amen.


End file.
